Nothing in the top drawer. Just a quill that looked as if it hadn’t seen use since the last King George ruled the land.
She moved to the second, reaching to the back in case anything was hiding in the shadows, and then she heard something.
Someone.
It was Thomas. He was standing in the doorway, looking rather peaked, and even in the dim light she could see that his eyes were bloodshot.
She gulped down a wave of guilt. He was a good man. She hated that she was falling in love with his rival. No, that was not it. She hated that Mr. Audley was his rival. No, not that. She hated the whole bloody situation. Every last speck of it.
“Grace,” he said. Nothing else, just her name.
She swallowed. It had been some time since they’d conversed on friendly terms. Not that they had been unfriendly, but truly, was there anything worse than oh-so-careful civility?
“Thomas,” she said, “I did not realize you were still awake.”
“It’s not so late,” he said with a shrug.
“No, I suppose not.” She glanced up at the clock. “The dowager is abed but not yet asleep.”
“Your work is never done, is it?” he asked, entering the room.
“No,” she said, wanting to sigh. Then, refusing to feel sorry for herself, she explained, “I ran out of writing paper upstairs.”
“For correspondence?”
“Your grandmother’s,” she affirmed. “I have no one with whom to correspond.” Dear heavens, could that be true? It had never even occurred to her before. Had she written a single letter in the years she’d been here? “I suppose once Elizabeth Willoughby marries and moves away…” She paused, thinking how sad that was, that she needed her friend to leave so she might be able to write a letter. “…I shall miss her.”
“Yes,” he said, looking somewhat distracted, not that she could blame him, given the current state of his affairs. “You are good friends, aren’t you?”
She nodded, reaching into the recesses of the third drawer. Success! “Ah, here we are.” She pulled forth a small stack of paper, then realized that her triumph meant that she had to go tend to her duties. “I must go write your grandmother’s letters now.”
“She does not write them herself?” he asked with surprise.
Grace almost chuckled at that. “She thinks she does. But the truth is, her penmanship is dreadful. No one could possibly make out what she intends to say. Even I have difficulty with it. I end up improvising at least half in the copying.”
She looked down at the pages in her hands, shaking them down against the top of the desk first one way and then on the side, to make an even stack. When she looked back up, Thomas was standing a bit closer, looking rather serious.
“I must apologize, Grace,” he said, walking toward her.
Oh, she didn’t want this. She didn’t want an apology, not when she herself held so much guilt in her heart. “For this afternoon?” she asked, her voice perhaps a little too light. “No, please, don’t be silly. It’s a terrible situation, and no one could fault you for-”
“For many things,” he cut in.
He was looking at her very strangely, and Grace wondered if he’d been drinking. He’d been doing a lot of that lately. She had told herself that she mustn’t scold him; truly, it was a wonder he was behaving as well as he was, under the circumstances.
“Please,” she said, hoping to put an end to the discussion. “I cannot think of anything for which you need to make amends, but I assure you, if there were, I would accept your apology, with all graciousness.”
“Thank you,” he said. And then, seemingly out of nowhere: “We depart for Liverpool in two days.”
Grace nodded. She knew this already. And surely he should have known that she was aware of the plans. “I imagine you have much to do before we leave,” she said.
“Almost nothing,” he said, but there was something awful in his voice, almost as if he were daring her to ask his meaning. And there had to be a meaning, because Thomas always had much to do, whether he had a planned departure or not.
“Oh. That must be a pleasant change,” she said, because she could not simply ignore his statement.
He leaned forward slightly, and Grace smelled spirits on his breath. Oh, Thomas. She ached for him, for what he must be feeling. And she wanted to tell him: I don’t want it, either. I want you to be the duke and Jack to be plain Mr. Audley, and I want all of this just to be over.
Even if the truth turned out to be not what she prayed for, she wanted to know.
But she couldn’t say this aloud. Not to Thomas. Already he was looking at her in that piercing way of his, as if he knew all her secrets-that she was falling in love with his rival, that she had already kissed him-several times-and she had wanted so much more.
She would have done more, if Jack had not stopped her.
“I am practicing, you see,” Thomas said.
“Practicing?”
“To be a gentleman of leisure. Perhaps I should emulate your Mr. Audley.”
“He is not my Mr. Audley,” she immediately replied, even though she knew he had only said as much to provoke her.
“He shall not worry,” Thomas continued, as if she’d not spoken. “I have left all of the affairs in perfect order. Every contract has been reviewed and every last number in every last column has been tallied. If he runs the estate into the ground, it shall be on his own head.”
“Thomas, stop,” she said, because she could not bear it. For either of them. “Don’t talk this way. We don’t know that he is the duke.”